🔗 Share this article

Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.

Walkout Information

The BMA stated that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.

Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the health department.

Causes of the Walkout

The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health minister to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”

“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”

He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to see that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”

“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the community and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the NHS.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.

Further information are expected shortly.